The New York Times-20080124-Warnings Don-t Deter Lovers of Sushi

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Warnings Don't Deter Lovers of Sushi

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Sara Barokas, a substitute teacher, noticed the yellow-and-red signs above the sushi case at the Gourmet Garage market on Broadway: Protect yourself and your family!!! Mercury in sushi.

By the time the sliding doors parted and she walked in at noontime on Wednesday, she had also heard about laboratory tests that found high levels of mercury in tuna bought at 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants, including the Gourmet Garage. Its tuna had the second-highest mercury level in the study, 1.25 parts per million.

She bought 12 pieces of tuna sushi anyway.

It's something I enjoy, she said. I don't eat sushi every day, so in moderation is it really a problem? It sounds like one of those everyday things they tell us could be harmful. Last week, what was it, caffeine for pregnant women is harmful? That's common sense.

Some sushi eaters said they were startled by the results of the lab tests, which were conducted for The New York Times and showed that tuna samples from the Gourmet Garage and four restaurants had unusually high levels of mercury -- above one part per million. The federal Food and Drug Administration can move to have fish containing that much mercury taken off the market, though it rarely does so. The four restaurants are Nobu Next Door, Sushi Seki, Sushi of Gari and Blue Ribbon Sushi.

In conversations at sushi restaurants and stores that sell sushi, some customers said they were considering changing their eating habits. Some said that they themselves did not eat much sushi, but that they planned to tell spouses or significant others to eat less and to be more concerned about the cumulative effects of mercury in fish. Some shrugged, saying the test results were just one more thing to be concerned about in a world of things to be concerned about.

You could worry about salmonella in the chicken, E. coli in the beef and pesticides in the fruit, said Sarah Kaplan, who was on her way into the Gourmet Garage with her daughter, Katie Bogdanow, 2 1/2. I think there are problems with everything, and you have to pick the risk. It's all about picking and choosing what you think is the biggest risk.

Deborah Crandall, a management consultant who lives in Greenwich Village, avoided tuna at lunch at Megu, a restaurant in TriBeCa whose tuna had 0.87 parts of mercury per million in the study. She ordered Kobe beef.

What is safe to eat these days? she said. I'm going to think twice about ordering certain things, like tuna. Ms. Crandall said she had been eating sushi twice a month. I don't think it's very good if you're eating it a lot.

Hiro Nishida, the president of the company that owns Megu, said Megu served tuna that was almost mercury-free at its other restaurant, in the Trump World Tower at 845 United Nations Plaza. Mr. Nishida said that that type of tuna, kindai tuna, was developed at Kinki University in Japan. It is shipped with an authenticity declaration covering its life history, from its 20 days of gestation to its diet in an open-water facility to the material on netting surrounding it.

He said that kindai tuna cost 50 percent more than ordinary tuna, but that he had not raised the prices on items that call for kindai tuna.

Eddy Sfeir, 23, a trader at Deutsche Bank, had lunch with two friends at Blue Ribbon Sushi, at 119 Sullivan Street, near Prince Street. Its tuna had the highest mercury level in the study, 1.4 parts per million.

Mr. Sfeir had heard about the findings before they arrived, and the first thing he said, before anyone in the group had had time to study the menu, was: Don't get tuna. I think it's serious.

One of his friends, Myriam Tawil, 23, of Paris, said: What's going on? Why can't I order tuna? She ordered something else.

We had eel, shrimp, crab and vegetables, Mr. Sfeir said later. I'm going to eat less sushi, in general. I eat sushi three times a week, but I don't eat a lot of raw fish, mostly California rolls.

Nobu Next Door, whose tuna had the third-highest mercury level in the study, is not open for lunch. At its sister restaurant, Nobu, next door, Roberta Berman was looking forward to lunch. Ms. Berman, a retired teacher from Staten Island, had made her reservation weeks ago -- she had never eaten there, and did not want to pass it up after she heard about the study.

I said, 'Let's go to Nobu anyway, and if I don't want to eat tuna, I don't have to,' she said. So I ate tuna. But a small amount.

She shrugged. If I become iridescent from it, I become iridescent from it, she said. I'll glow in the dark.

[Illustration]PHOTOS: A chef at Megu in TriBeCa preparing tuna sushi. The other Megu, at Trump Tower, uses special tuna with low mercury levels.(PHOTOGRAPH BY RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES); SARAH KAPLAN: She doesn't eat sushi, but buys it for her husband(PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN CHERNIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)